Chains
The tide, at its highest, came up to Irian’s chest. The water had flooded in through the cage at the speed of a running horse. She gripped the bars so as not to be swept off her feet, watching the level rise up her body.
Koo perched on her head, and chirped at the tide. ‘Back! Back!’
‘That famously doesn’t work, Koo,’ said Irian drily. Her nereid blood had given the tips of her fingers a silver sheen where the sea touched them, but it did not protect her from the cold onslaught of the water.
At last the tide receded, and she sat shivering on the iron floor of the cage. She was soaking wet, and she was so hungry that the bars of the cage were beginning to spin around her if she stood too quickly. But Koo was very young and she refused to show misery in front of him.
‘We’re going to try again. You’re going to fetch something for me. Fetch – do you understand? You’re going fly to those stones, over there, and pull off a mussel, and bring it to me.’
In the course of the next hours, Koo fetched her a host of things that were definitively not mussels: three shells, six stones, a clam, a crab, many scraps of driftwood and what might have been the partial remains of a mouse’s skull.
‘The clam I’m keeping,’ said Irian. ‘But we’ll share the crab.’
Koo crunched on the skull with obvious enjoyment. ‘Mine.’
‘Very much yours. Ready to try again? Do you see those black dots, in the distance? Those are mussels. Yes? Fetch them, Koo.’
‘Yes,’ croaked Koo. ‘Yup. Fetch, yup.’ Koo took off again – but he had gone only a few yards when he gave a sudden shriek of terror. He came flying back to Irian, shrieking, ‘Mine! Irian! Mine!’
Irian did not need to look up at the sky to know what had happened.
The stymphalian bird swept in to land on the stony beach, and Carla kicked at it as she dismounted.
‘Vile creature,’ she said.
Carla took a comb from her pocket and began untangling her long, soft hair, extracting the knots that had been blown into it by the wind.
Her beauty looked as careless and natural as breathing.
It was not. She refined it and polished it like a weapon; nothing about her face, clothes or hair was accidental.
Irian watched her. Carla seemed annoyed by her gaze.
‘It is not vanity,’ Carla said. ‘Beauty is a tool, a trap, a lure and a knife. People find it impossible not to think about it when they see it – which leaves them less space for other thoughts. It’s a form of power, to be beautiful.’ She smiled at Irian. ‘But you wouldn’t know.’
‘As you say.’
Carla clicked her fingers, and the stymphalian lay down behind her. She sat in the sand, and set her back against it.
‘How do you control the birds?’ said Irian. ‘I’ve never seen them act like that.’
‘I don’t. Astor Morax controls them. He has told this one to do whatever I wish, but it is under his command, not mine.’
‘Who is Astor Morax?’
‘The man who controls the birds, and the bandits. And myself.’
‘He controls you?’
‘In a sense, yes.’
‘You have told me a lot about yourself, these last days. Are you always this honest?’
‘No. Never. I tell nobody anything. But that gets exhausting eventually.’
‘Does it? I wouldn’t know.’
‘It does.’ Carla spoke in the same harsh, cold voice, entirely without self-pity. ‘It’s possible to die of silence eventually.’
‘Why are you telling me though?’
‘Oh, I would have thought that was obvious! In part because you’re going to die. Very soon now, I think. But largely, Irian Guinne, because I have won. And what is winning if you do not tell someone?’
She took from the stymphalian bird’s saddlebag a great length of iron chain and a knife. ‘I am coming into the cage. I am going to chain you.’ Irian made as if to dart past her, but Carla caught her arm, pointed the knife at her and turned to the bird. ‘If she moves a step, peck her to death.’
Carla bound her ankles close together with lengths of chain, and fastened one end to the bars farthest from the door.
‘That hurts,’ said Irian.
‘I know,’ said Carla. ‘I know.’